Subject: Recipes from the 1800s

From: [email-masked] (Howard Richter)
Date: 9 Dec 1993 15:35:21 -0500

My son has a class project, he is looking for any recipes that
might have been used on the wagon trains of the middle and late
1800s.

Thanks in advance
hbr
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From: Gretchen Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1993 14:28:52 -0500

Today I'm at home with my cookbooks, so here's some ideas:

>From More Than Moonshine, Appalachian Recipes and Recollections by
Sidney Saylor Farr
(Family recipes passed down by the author's family from the late 1800s on)
This is a small sample of recipes that use (mostly) storable
transportable ingredients.  I'm assuming a lack of producing livestock,
though this was probably not always the case.

Boiled Coffee
7 tblp ground coffee
1 egg white
1/2 cup cold water
6 cups boiling water

Stir coffee into egg white and cold water.  Add boiling water and let
boil 10 minutes or so.  Serve.

Ash Cake
1 tsp salt
1 quart sifted cornmeal
boiling water
Sift salt with cornmeal.  Por into mixture enough boiling water to make
a thick mush.  Shape dough into rounc, flat cakes.  Skeep a clean place
on the hottest part of the hearth.  Put cvakes on this clean spot and
cover with hot wood ashes.  When bread is done wash and wipe dry.  Or
wrap each cake in a cabbage leaf before covering with ashes, and you
will not need to wash cakes before eating.

Short'nin bread
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 stick very soft butter 1/4 lb
1 1/2 cup flour
Heat over to 350.  Cream sugar into butter; add flour and mix well. 
Roll about 1/2 inch thick on floured board and cut out with biscut
cutter.  Place on lightly greased and floured pan and back for about 25
minutes.

Fried Rabbit - Dress rabbit and cut into serving pieces.  Put in a
kettle with a sufficient amount of water and boil for 5 to 10 minutes. 
Remove kettle from heat and let stand until meat is cold. Dry each piece
and dip into a beaten ett, then roll in flour, seasoned with salt and
pepper to taste.  Fry in an equal mixture of lard and butter until
nicely browned.  Remove pieces or rabbit and keep hot.  In the drippings
remaining in skillet, put in flour enough to make a creamy paste, pour
in  cup of milk and let the mixture come to a boil.  When it is of
desired consistenc, put over rabbit.

Granny Brock's Greens
4 cups early greens (sheep sorrel, dandelion, poke, etc, etc, etc)
4 slices bacon
3 green onions, chopped
3 tbsp vinegar
2 tsp sugar
1/2/tsp salt
1/4 tsp dry mustard
dash of pepper
Gather greens early in the day, wash until all grit is removed.  Fry
bacon and remove from skillet, leaving fat to cool. Mix chopped onions
and greens together in larye bowl and then put in individual bowls if
desired.  Crumble bacon over greens.  To the fat in skillet, add
vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard and peper.  Head and pour over greens. 
Toss until wilted.  Serve immediately.

And some from The Williamsburg Art of Cookery, which is really a
selection from various recipe books from the 17 and 1800s.

Split Pea Soup (From Mrs Coles Recipe, c 1837)
Wash and soak one pount od dried split peas for about 3 hours.  Put them
on to cook in three quarts of cold water, with one large onion, a ham
bone, pepper and salt.  Cook slowly about 3 hours until soup is thick
and peas very soft.  Strain through a course sieve and serve hot with
toasted bread cut in dice.

Hope this helps.  If he's going to research the matter, have him look at
the Little House on the Prairie books.  Arguably fiction, but they are
generally pretty accurate as a starting place for prairies research. 
Someone put out a Little House cookbook a while back, this might also be
worth looking into.

Good luck to him!

toodles, gretchen

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From: [email-masked] (Andrea Palounek)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 01:45:22 GMT

>might have been used on the wagon trains of the middle and late
Samuel Arnold has written a great book, still in print, called "Eating Up
the Santa Fe Trail," which is just that.  We've been having a lot of fun
with it.                  Cheers,   Andrea